Javier’s quest takes him from Amy’s island, where his actions have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for his friend, toward Mecha where he will find either sal­va­tion… or death.

Excerpt (cour­tesy of Tor.com):

Javier had enjoyed his share of organic vir­gins. Because he was syn­thetic, they enjoyed him even more. His fail­safe meant that his mem­ory would cor­rupt and his mind would fry if he went too fast and hurt them too much. So he went slow. He tick­led. He teased. He got them wet and wild and wide. He made them want it more than they feared it. They called him atten­tive, thought­ful, car­ing. He called it self-preservation. And occa­sion­ally, he called it employment.

There was the girl on her way to Brown who’d never had time for a boyfriend what with all her over­achiev­ing. She met Javier in Mex­ico dur­ing “spring break,” which seemed to be some­thing her ther­a­pist had sug­gested. Her own sug­ges­tion was that she get the whole first time over with, already, so she could put her curios­ity to rest and just move on.

“I think it’s bet­ter, this way,” she said. “I won’t be one of those girls who can never get over her first time. I won’t obsess over you. And you won’t obsess over me.”

“Not after­ward, no,” he’d said. “But I think you’ll find that dur­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties, I can be quite the micro-managing dick.”

This series started with vN which fol­lowed Amy, a robot made for the plea­sure of humans. In Amy’s case, her owner treated her as a per­son and kept her inno­cent like a child as long as he could. We are pre­sented with the idyl­lic set­ting of a human car­ing for a vN as if it were a human child and teach­ing it while it aged but didn’t grow, but Amy was an unusual case. Most vN were cre­ated to do work for us, to be there for us in any and every way imag­in­able, and with a built-in fail­safe pre­vent­ing them from ever harm­ing us. And when I say ‘every way imag­in­able’ that is the truth. Most of the vN have been used by humans for their sex­ual plea­sure and do not know that not every­one wants to have sex with them. In a way, even the ‘adult’ vN are like children.

iD picks up where vN leaves off with Amy and Javier on the oasis Amy has cre­ated as a sanc­tu­ary for vN. But soon the seclu­sion they have fought so hard for is destroyed and Javier is on his own search­ing for Amy. Javier, unlike Amy, was not raised as a child loved by par­ents. His father aban­dons him soon after Javier is iter­ated (how the vN repro­duce) and Javier finds him­self in jail. From there he makes his way through life, iter­at­ing his sons, and strug­gling to pro­vide for him­self. He learns that humans want him in sex­ual ways, and he uses that to his advantage.

After read­ing other reviews, I thought per­haps I was miss­ing some­thing while read­ing this book. How­ever, I think it’s that I am not as sen­si­tive as oth­ers to cer­tain top­ics. The sex scenes depicted were not overly detailed or offen­sive and they served the pur­pose that the author intended by includ­ing them.

The author reveals much about the darker side of the human’s plans for the vN and while some will see these instances of sex and deprav­ity that made Javier who he is as gra­tu­itous, they are not. They pro­vide an insight into the lives of the vN and makes you ques­tion not only your own reac­tions to the scenes, but also to ques­tion, can robots be human? Do they feel like we do or is it only because we have pro­grammed them to? Are we tak­ing advan­tage of them or is it our right since we cre­ated them?

The book takes many aspects of robot and human coex­is­tence into ques­tion and while it seems to con­clude rather quickly, it draws out so many thought-provoking ides, that you hardly notice it’s over till you’re left want­ing to know more.

I highly rec­om­mend this for any­one who likes ‘what if’ sci­ence fic­tion books. This isn’t hard­core sci­ence fic­tion, but it will cer­tainly make you won­der long after you fin­ish it.